Contributed by Sharon Butler / Cora Cohen panel discussion; Two Coats Open Studio Jun 3; Twenty by Sixteen at Morgan Lehman; Zombie Formalism 12 years later; Last call for Abstract by Definition; more
Tag: Sharon Butler
Plagens: Ralph Meeker, or why I like James Brooks as much as de Kooning
Peter Plagens has been a prominent voice in American art criticism for decades, providing trustworthy and eloquent guidance to the enigmatic and sometimes bewildering world of contemporary art. Plagens is also a practicing painter, which affords him special insight into art practices and sets him apart from other critics. He is drawn to undervalued work and has repeatedly demonstrated the rewards of looking carefully at what the klieg lights have ultimately passed over. On the occasion of Peter’s retirement as art critic for the Wall Street Journal, we are republishing this essay, which originally appeared in Art News in 2010. The piece starts with a look at Ralph Meeker, a half-forgotten movie actor, and opens into something larger: memory, family, and a life of paying attention to the things other people walk past. A pleasure to read, it’s the work of a critic who trusts his own eyes and his own words. –Sharon Butler
How the term “zombie formalism” killed the next generation
Contributed by Sharon Butler / In 2014, a single phrase reshaped the trajectory of contemporary abstract painting. When the late Walter Robinson – painter, critic, and veteran of the Pictures Generation – coined the derogatory term “zombie formalism” in an essay for Artspace, he set off a chain reaction that would stigmatize a generation of young abstract artists and cast a long shadow over abstraction in general. More than a decade later, the story of zombie formalism reads as a pungent example of aesthetic cynicism and jadedness – a case study in how criticism, commerce, and cultural anxiety can converge to distort and ultimately damage an entire movement.
AAA at 90: Keep on looking
Contributed by Leslie Roberts / The exhibition “Abstract by Definition” at Art Cake celebrates the 90th anniversary of the American Abstract Artists (AAA). The show is subtitled “An Index,” but is not one in the usual sense – not, that is, an itemized set of categories, styles, intentions, or formal languages defining abstract art. Curator Saul Ostrow has instead organized groups of several works – usually four. This installation effectively highlights the particular qualities of each piece, and emphasizes the diversity of what we call contemporary abstraction.
Sharon’s Substack / May 1, 2026
Contributed by Sharon Butler / A couple of weeks ago, I got a letter from Joy Amina Garnett, a friend, painter, and one of the earliest art bloggers. She stopped painting and left NYC in 2020, moved to LA, started writing a memoir about her family of intellectual Egyptian ancestors – now finished and forthcoming as The Bee Kingdom (Gaudy Boy, 2026)– and hasn’t looked back. She invited me to publish some images of my recent paintings in the Evergreen Review, where she has been the art editor for several years. Evergreen is a storied literary magazine founded in 1957 by…
Eric Wolf: Into the fog
Contributed by Sharon Butler / Few artists – even among those dedicated to the landscape – would look at a body of water and think, “OK, I’m going to spend the next 30 years painting this.” Yet, year by year, Eric Wolf has done just that, driven by a fascination with the daily transformation of water’s surface, its complementary relationship to air, its connection with people, and the peculiarly seductive power of black ink on paper. “Two Waters,” on view at Abri Mars, spans three decades of Wolf’s en plein air ink painting, which he did exclusively at two sites: a pond in Chatham, New York, and a lake in Rangeley, Maine.
Two Coats Resident Artist Gyan Shrosbree, May 5 – 10
Contributed by Sharon Butler / In May, Two Coats of Paint welcomes the return of Gyan Shrosbree from Fairfield, Iowa. Gyan, who had residencies in 2016 and 2017, makes clothing that she combines with twentieth-century modernist painting in an idiosyncratic and inventive practice that includes collaborative activities like sewing with her mother and staging exhibitions in the form of fashion shows. The closet, she declares, is her field of possibility. For Shrosbree, clothing is both practical and symbolic. It protects our bodies from the environment while projecting something about our inner life. It’s this duality that gives her bold paintings their emotional charge.
Sharon’s Substack / April 1, 2026
Contributed by Sharon Butler / Reading Gary Garrels’ remembrance of Brice Marden in Artforum in 2023, I encountered a Rothko quote to the effect that paintings are about basic human emotions – tragedy, ecstasy, doom, and so on. I was not inclined to think about my work in that way, so I spent some time reading about basic human emotions, which, in my placid New England family, were generally dismissed without much examination….
Doomscrolling 3-D + IRL: The 2026 Whitney Biennial
Contributed by Sharon Butler / The Whitney Biennial 2026 has a knack for knocking the human project, wistfully and ruefully examining the past, and planting dread about the future. Curators Marcela Guerrero and Drew Sawyer, with Beatriz Cifuentes and Carina Martinez, made 300 studio visits, ultimately winnowing the roster down to 56 artists, duos, and collectives. The curators’ definition of what is “American” is expansive; the artists’ birthplaces span the globe, and many have settled in the US after fleeing wars and other forms of political turmoil….
Two Coats Resident Artist: Stephanie McMahon, March 8-13, 2026
Contributed by Sharon Butler / This March I am delighted to welcome Stephanie McMahon to the Two Coats of Paint Residency Program. Stephanie lives and works in Alfred, New York, where she is a professor at SUNY Alfred and co-founder of the Alfred/Düsseldorf MFA in Painting and Residency Program. Up in Western New York, she is surrounded by an unruly and tangled 17+ acres of forests, fields, and ravines. While her rural environment has informed her paintings, it is the visual form of the twisting branches, leaf shapes, and shifting color that most fascinates her. Stephanie’s primary interest is the activity of painting itself.
“Spot On,” at 68 Prince Street Gallery in Kingston
On Saturday, February 21, 2 pm. please join artist and Two Coats of Paint publisher Sharon Butler and artist Jason Travers for a conversation at 68 Prince Street Gallery in Kingston, NY. They will be discussing their new paintings, which are on viewat the gallery in “Spot On” through March 8, 2026. Free and open to the public.
Sharon’s Substack / February 1, 2026
The “Sell America” trade, Spot On, Street Corner Conversations, Insomnia Project, Visual Quitter, and Two Coats of Paint Resident Artist Craig Drennen arrives this month….
Street Corner Conversations: Sharon Butler, Wendy Fulenwider Liszt, Ariel Mitchell at McBride/Dillman
Join us on Sunday, February 8 at 2 pm for a lively conversation with abstract painters Sharon Butler, Wendy Fulenwider Liszt, and Ariel Mitchell as part of our exhibition Street Corner Conversations. Seating is limited, and refreshments will be served.
Sharon’s Substack / January 3, 2026
Contributed by Sharon Butler / Invitations, dates, details — McBride/Dillman, CLEA RSKY, 68 Prince Street Gallery in Kingston, the first Open Studio of 2026. This piece was originally published in Sharon Butler Notebooks on Substack.
palladium/Athena Project: Democratizing art
Contributed by Mary Shah / Greg Lindquist and Theresa Dadezzio, co-founders of palladium/Athena Project, just opened their inaugural show, “Works on Paper,” featuring an impressive 175+ artists at their new curatorial space in Greenpoint, Brooklyn. I sat down and talked with Theresa and Greg about the project.
Alan Butler: Data-driven
Contributed by Sharon Butler / In “Assets,” on view at Green on Red Gallery in Dublin through December 13, Alan Butler – no relation – practices what could be called digital-age synesthesia, the neurological quirk by which the senses get their wires crossed. Synesthetes may taste color or see it as numbers. While Kandinsky had the insight and talent to create arguably the first Western abstract paintings by translating music into painting, Butler has taken on a distinctly twenty-first-century project: transforming open-source digital information – stock quotes, climate data, video game coding, and other assorted online effluvia – into playful physical objects that directly engage the senses.
Sharon’s Substack / December 4, 2025
Contributed by Sharon Butler / A few days after the final 2025 Two Coats of Paint Resident Artist left, I packed a bag and tagged along with the editor on a short trip to Dublin. He had a non-art-related conference, and I so I walked around the city, admiring countless wool tweeds and hand-knit sweaters, checking out art, and catching up with friends. When we got back, he wrote about Stephanie Deady’s painting show at Kevin Kananvaugh, and I tackled Alan Butler’s mind-spinning data-driven spectacle at Green on Red.
Sharon’s Substack / November 5, 2025
Contributed by Sharon Butler / If you follow me on Instagram, you probably noticed that the new paintings have been stacking up in the studio […]
Spring Projects’ epic subway series
Contributed by Jonathan Stevenson / Most New Yorkers couldn’t live without the subway. It is their savior if occasionally their oppressor. They love it so much that they hate it when it lets them down, but the opprobrium is often oddly affectionate. Barroom arguments have fulminated and flourished over which subway line is worse – the F or the 7, the 2 or the L. Patronizing the subway can be a point of gritty cosmopolitan pride: real New Yorkers don’t use Uber. And it’s a great social equalizer, as reflected in Ralph Fasanella’s 1950 folk-art painting Subway Riders, now ensconced in the wall of 53rd Street/Fifth Avenue Station and as idealistic as ever. “Subway Riders” the group show is now up at Springs Projects. It keenly captures the subway’s pervasive, multivalent thrum through New York life with work by over 100 artists and a few eager amateurs (one is me).
Paul Feeley: When paintings want to be sculptures
Contributed by Sharon Butler / “Paul Feeley: The Shape of Things” is Garth Greenan Gallery’s fourth solo exhibition for the painter, who died in 1966. But it is the first to ask – and answer – what happened when Feeley, known for re-introducing geometry to post-war abstraction, grew tired of his signature style. This show at last gives proper attention to Feeley’s drive to move beyond the flatness of the canvases he had been producing for years.
